Adam Smith (1723-1790) · AuthorAuthor
Adam Smith
1723-1790 · Scottish moral philosopher and political economist of the Scottish Enlightenment
About Adam Smith
Adam Smith (1723–1790) was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, studied at the University of Glasgow under Francis Hutcheson and then at Balliol College, Oxford. He lectured in Edinburgh and in 1751 became a professor at Glasgow, holding the chair of moral philosophy from 1752 until 1764; his Theory of Moral Sentiments appeared in 1759. From 1764 to 1766 he travelled in France and Geneva as tutor to the young Duke of Buccleuch, meeting Quesnay, Turgot and Voltaire. He spent most of the next decade at Kirkcaldy writing An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), was appointed a commissioner of customs in Edinburgh in 1778, and died there in 1790.
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The Wealth of NationsAdam Smith
1776 · 18th Century · Political Theory
Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in London by Strahan and Cadell on 9 March 1776, asks what makes a nation rich and what policies help or hinder that growth. Smith's answer is that wealth is not a store of gold and silver but the annual produce of a nation's labour, and that it grows chiefly through the division of labour, the accumulation of capital and the freedom to trade.